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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Something
Dear
Really
Deserve
Begin
Ready
Almost
Feeling
Feelings
Done
Perpetual

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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominableYet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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